Pointing out stories you may have missed. History has been made in Italy, after a German woman won a 10-year battle to steer a gondola through Venice - the first woman to do so. Alexandra Hai, 35, successfully challenged the all-male Venice Gondola Association and city authorities. Ms Hai failed the gondola test three times - and was also fined once by police for illegal gondoliering.She began her new job on Sunday and will be able to take tourists to small Venetian hotels. But officially she cannot claim the title "gondolier". The daughter of an Algerian civil servant and a German midwife, she moved to Venice from the US in 1996 and became fascinated with gondolas.
``It's just a destiny - it was not a child dream, or something like that. It just happened,'' she told BBC Radio 4's PM programme. ``I saw it and said 'I want to try this'.'' She said there was no rule that women could not become gondoliers, but she thought that the fact she was both a woman and was not Italian had not helped her case with the authorities. ``Somebody in a high position was concerned and not very happy there was a stranger and a woman at the same time trying to take over such an old tradition.''
News source: BBC.com
FOOTNOTE: I should have used the headline `A Tiller The Hunt'.
2 comments:
"Hai-jinks"?
"Cornetto-caper"?
My second reference is probably too parochial for some international viewers so, to make it a level playing field, go to this link, Cornetto-caper if you didn't know what I was referring to!
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